Last spring, Oskar Eustis found himself at a theater conference, "tearing out my hair" while confessing a "traumatic personal crisis" to Mark Taper Forum artistic director Gordon Davidson. After nine years with San Francisco's Eureka Theatre, the last three as its artistic director, Eustis was watching his world break apart. Deaths, economics, attrition--all were taking a toll on the 31-year-old. "I don't know what I believe anymore," Eustis confessed to Davidson.

It was probably the largest gathering ever assembled for talk about L.A. theater. At least that's what some of the participants said at the "Inventing the Future" conference on mid-sized theaters at UCLA last weekend. No one took an exact head count. Admission was free, so there was no formal registration process. The best guess of the sponsors--the Audrey Skirball-Kenis Theatre and the S. Mark Taper Foundation--was that as many as 1,100 people attended at least some part of the three-day event.

It was probably the largest gathering ever assembled for talk about L.A. theater. At least that's what some of the participants said at the "Inventing the Future" conference on mid-sized theaters at UCLA last weekend. No one took an exact head count. Admission was free, so there was no formal registration process. The best guess of the sponsors--the Audrey Skirball-Kenis Theatre and the S. Mark Taper Foundation--was that as many as 1,100 people attended at least some part of the three-day event.

Last spring, Oskar Eustis found himself at a theater conference, "tearing out my hair" while confessing a "traumatic personal crisis" to Mark Taper Forum artistic director Gordon Davidson. After nine years with San Francisco's Eureka Theatre, the last three as its artistic director, Eustis was watching his world break apart. Deaths, economics, attrition--all were taking a toll on the 31-year-old. "I don't know what I believe anymore," Eustis confessed to Davidson.

A director fell through a trapdoor during a rehearsal for the Public Theater's production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in New York City's Central Park, breaking four ribs and suffering a collapsed lung. The director, Daniel Sullivan, was expected back at rehearsal in a few days. The production's first preview at the Delacorte Theater was canceled, said the Public Theater's artistic director, Oskar Eustis.

December 7, 1992 | BETH KLEID, Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation's press

Fallen Angels: "Angels in America," which closed in L.A. Sunday, is going to New York, but how much of it, when, where and with whom is up for grabs. Speculation that Oskar Eustis and Tony Taccone, who staged Tony Kushner's two-part megaplay at the Mark Taper Forum, will not travel with it is all but confirmed. Taper artistic director Gordon Davidson said during the weekend that a replacement was "likely for lots of complex reasons."

Regarding "The Importance of the Taper's 'Caesar' " (Counterpunch, May 20): By publishing Tony Kushner's rebuttal of Sylvie Drake's negative review of "Julius Caesar," The Times is guilty of, in Brutus' words, "a several bastardy." To put Kushner's comments into perspective, not only did Oskar Eustis direct Kushner's "Millennium Approaches" at the Taper, Too last year, but he has also directed many of Kushner's other plays and they are close friends.

New plays, a revival and a special engagement of the Taper's Improvisational Theatre Project (ITP) will constitute the 1990 season at the Mark Taper Forum's experimental Taper, Too. John Steppling's "The Thrill" (Jan.23-Feb.18), to be co-directed by the playwright and Taper associate artistic director Robert Egan, is described as "a story of tawdry love in a shopping mall with characters whose vulnerability and dreams are sometimes masked by emotional brutality."

The Public Theater in New York has selected a new artistic director -- Oskar Eustis, a former associate artistic director of L.A.'s Mark Taper Forum. The New York theater's board voted Wednesday to hire Eustis to succeed producer George C. Wolfe. Eustis has been the artistic director of Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, R.I., since 1994. His new job, leading the company that legendary producer Joseph Papp built, is considered one of the most prestigious posts in American theater.

It might have been awkward--the fact that Tony Kushner, Oskar Eustis and Tony Taccone sat side by side as they made trips to the lectern to accept Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards in Studio City. Though Eustis and Taccone staged Kushner's "Angels in America" at the Mark Taper Forum last fall (and Eustis had earlier commissioned it), Kushner replaced them with George C. Wolfe for the upcoming Broadway production of the epic. Yet no hard feelings were apparent last Sunday.

David Henry Hwang's "Bondage" is one of five works by writers with Southern California ties at this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. In Hwang's play, a masochist (B.D. Wong, above left) and his sadist (Kathryn Layng) discover that their leather act no longer prevents intimacy and love becomes possible--if ethnic stereotypes don't get in the way. The one-act is directed by Oskar Eustis, resident director at the Mark Taper Forum.

Academy Award-winning actress Meryl Streep has gifted New York's Public Theater with $1 million. The donation -- in honor of her mentor and Public Theater's founder, Joseph Papp, as well as writer-director Nora Ephron -- was announced Thursday evening at a private reception celebrating the completion of Public Theater's newly renovated (to the tune of $40 million) Astor Place home. Streep is a longtime alumna of Public Theater, which produces Shakespeare and the classics as well as musicals and contemporary and experimental theater.